Cohort fertility patterns in the Nordic Countries

Abstract

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Not Just Later, but Fewer: Novel Trends in Cohort Fertility in the Nordic Countries

“…The Nor dic countries' child bear ing trends and fam ily pol i cies share many char ac ter is tics and have his tor i cally conformed to the established idea of a com mon Nor dic fer til ity regime (Andersson et al 2009)-that is, rel a tively high and sta ble cohort fer til ity underpinned by high lev els of sup port for work ing moth ers. Finland can be seen as a slight out lier, where ulti mate child less ness has his tor i cally been con sid er ably morecom monthanintheotherNor diccountries (Hellstrandetal.2020;Kreyenfeld and Konietzka 2017).…”

“…Childlessness lev els are gen er ally around the Euro pean aver age (Sobotka 2017a), and the twochild norm is strong in these countries (Duvander et al 2019;Frejka 2008). In all Nor dic countries, ulti mate child less ness rose slightly starting with the 1950s cohorts but plateaued for the 1960s-1970s cohorts at a level rang ing from 12% in Norway to 15% in Sweden (Andersson et al 2009;Jalovaara et al 2019). In Finland, ulti mate child less ness is above 20% for the cohorts born in the early 1970s, which is among the highest shares glob ally (Kreyenfeld and Konietzka 2017).…”

“…In highincome countries, fer til ity post pone ment has been one of the main demo graphic trends in recent decades (Mills et al 2011;Nathan and Pardo 2019;Sobotka 2017b). One of the most strik ing demo graphic devel op ments in the Nor dic countries has been the strong fer til ity recu per a tion at older ages, which has counterbalanced post pone ment (Andersson et al 2009;Lesthaeghe 2010). Whereas the wide spread post pone ment of fer til ity observed in most highincome countries has been linked to ris ing edu ca tional enroll ment and career build ing (Ní Bhrolcháin and Beaujouan 2012), fer til ity recu per a tion has been char ac ter ized as a con se quence of wel fare pro vi sions that sup port dualearner fam i lies with young chil dren (Kravdal and Rindfuss 2008;Lesthaeghe2010).…”

“…Compared with other highincome countries, the Nor dic countries of Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland com bine rel a tively high fer til ity lev els with high female labor mar ket par tic i pa tion rates. The Nor dic countries' rel a tively high fer til ity regime is often attrib uted to pub lic pol i cies that lower the oppor tu nity costs of fam ily for ma tion and pro mote workfam ily rec on cil i a tion and gen der equal ity (Andersson 2004;Andersson et al 2009;Neyer et al 2006). The Nor dic countries are often seen ADVANCE PUBLICATION as fore run ners in fer til ity behav ior.…”

“…Periodbased mea sures are sen si tive to the tim ing of child bear ing (Bongaarts and Feeney 1998) and tend to under es ti mate the com pleted fer til ity of cohorts when women post pone child bear ing (Myrskylä et al 2013). Most of the pre vi ously observed var i a tion in period fer til ity in the Nor dic countries has been attrib uted to tempo effects, given that the com pleted cohort fer til ity level has been nearly con stant and close to replace ment level for cohorts born since the 1940s (Andersson et al 2009;Jalovaara et al 2019). A key exam ple of a tempo effect is the so-calledroller-coasterfer til itythatSwedenexpe ri encedinthe1990s(Hoem2005), when the TFR fell from its peak level of 2.14 in 1990 to an all time low of 1.51 in 1999.…”